JFC Travel Blog

The new National Express East Coast franchise has started today. Although I do have my doubts as to whether the franchise will be a success (as I believe they’ve overbid for the franchise like GNER did in 2005) and I’ll miss the GNER branding, I do wish them well for the future and hope that they prove me wrong with regards to their bid. They have ideas for the future, some are totally new ideas and others are based on GNER’s original 2005 bid, if they can deliver and remain profitable then travelling the East Coast route will still remain a pleasure.

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It looks like the future of GNER’s new web site and booking engine is safe. If you visit nationalexpresseastcoast.co.uk at the moment all you get as an ‘under construction’ notice, however if you look up the IP address of the site you will see that it is the same as the GNER site. Also tickets.nationalexpresseastcoast.co.uk currently displays the GNER booking engine. Presumably from midnight all they need to do is change a setting and the new National Express brand will appear in place of GNER. It’ll be a shame to see the GNER brand disappear but at least the new website will be used for more than a couple of weeks.

UPDATE: new site is live at www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com (.co.uk has not been set up yet - looks like the .com form will be the official one).
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With the end of GNER’s franchise imminent I’ve heard stories about people collecting whatever GNER memorabilia they can so they can sell it on eBay. I expect most of the interesting items will show up in the next few days after the franchise is over. Some recently completed auctions have included a presentation boxed set to celebrate the first anniversary of GNER in 1997 and an award presentation set of two cut crystal glasses. (more…)

Update: Amex is now accepted on the NXEC site as of 25th January 2007.
Although I think most of us would agree that overall the new GNER booking engine (NXEC now use the same booking engine) is a big improvement over the old one that was based on thetrainline.com. However, it does have one drawback - it does not currently accept American Express (more…)

In 2003 GNER surpassed my expectations by a long shot. GNER customer services by this time had already impressed me on a number of occasions but this time customer services and the on board crew had really gone out of their way to make my parents anniversary special. (more…)

In most of the UK the trains look a mess thanks to the way the franchising process works. When a new company takes over a franchise it always takes a few years before all their trains are rebranded. In many cases it’s even longer, in London you still often see trains in the old British Rail Network SouthEast colour scheme or the colour scheme of the past franchisee, many times you see a mix of colour schemes over various carriages on the same train. It doesn’t do a good job of setting brand identity. (more…)

The White Rose was originally a GNER service between London Kings Cross and York stations operated with trains leased from Eurostar. The leaflet GNER produced promoting this service said that they planned to eventually run these services north of York. This never happened, perhaps it was because of the sharp bend on the approach to Newcastle may have been awkward for such a long train. (more…)

Standard Plus was GNER’s answer to what airlines call Premium Economy. The GNER Standard Plus product basically offered first class service in a standard class seat. Standard Plus was initially introduced on the London - Leeds services, it was then extended to the services towards Newcastle but was relatively quickly withdrawn on this route and finally scrapped altogether. (more…)

Up until 2003 GNER offered a guest ale as part of their on board menu. The guest ale was always priced at £2.50 a bottle which was the most expensive beer on board at the time. The pricing was convenient as you (still) can buy buffet vouchers at GNER ticket offices which cost £7.50 for a £10 voucher and £4 for a £5 voucher effectively meaning you could buy 4 for the price of 3. It became an even better deal once I qualified for their loyalty scheme GNER Excel (later replaced by GNERtime) which gives you two drinks for the price of one - combined with a buffet voucher you could then effectively get 8 beers for the price of 3. However, the 2 for 1 deal was good enough on its own so most of the time I didn’t bother with buffet vouchers anymore. (more…)

It has been known  for a few months that GNER has been planning to roll out a new and improved online booking engine, but what came as a surprise to me was they have rolled out an entirely new website today despite their franchise coming to an end on the 9th December. (more…)